“Yes.”

“Anne Shirley, are you in your senses?”

“I think so,” said Anne wearily.  “Oh, Phil, don’t scold me.  You don’t understand.”

“I certainly don’t understand.  You’ve encouraged Roy Gardner in every way for two years—­and now you tell me you’ve refused him.  Then you’ve just been flirting scandalously with him.  Anne, I couldn’t have believed it of you.”

“I wasn’t flirting with him—­I honestly thought I cared up to the last minute—­and then—­well, I just knew I never could marry him.”

“I suppose,” said Phil cruelly, “that you intended to marry him for his money, and then your better self rose up and prevented you.”

“I didn’t.  I never thought about his money.  Oh, I can’t explain it to you any more than I could to him.”

“Well, I certainly think you have treated Roy shamefully,” said Phil in exasperation.  “He’s handsome and clever and rich and good.  What more do you want?”

“I want some one who belongs in my life.  He doesn’t.  I was swept off my feet at first by his good looks and knack of paying romantic compliments; and later on I thought I must be in love because he was my dark-eyed ideal.”

“I am bad enough for not knowing my own mind, but you are worse,” said Phil.

“I do know my own mind,” protested Anne.  “The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.”

“Well, I suppose there is no use in saying anything to you.”

“There is no need, Phil.  I’m in the dust.  This has spoiled everything backwards.  I can never think of Redmond days without recalling the humiliation of this evening.  Roy despises me—­and you despise me—­and I despise myself.”

“You poor darling,” said Phil, melting.  “Just come here and let me comfort you.  I’ve no right to scold you.  I’d have married Alec or Alonzo if I hadn’t met Jo.  Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life.  They aren’t clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels.”

“I hope that no one will ever again ask me to marry him as long as I live,” sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing that she meant it.

Chapter XXXIX

Deals with Weddings

Anne felt that life partook of the nature of an anticlimax during the first few weeks after her return to Green Gables.  She missed the merry comradeship of Patty’s Place.  She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her.  In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again.  And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.

She had not seen Roy again after their painful parting in the park pavilion; but Dorothy came to see her before she left Kingsport.

“I’m awfully sorry you won’t marry Roy,” she said.  “I did want you for a sister.  But you are quite right.  He would bore you to death.  I love him, and he is a dear sweet boy, but really he isn’t a bit interesting.  He looks as if he ought to be, but he isn’t.”